Yes, that’s a real article by a real journalist… well, columnist. And yes, she’s talking about how batshit crazy she is. Seriously, there are so many things basically wrong in the article that it made me actually physically make a hurumph noise.

So, point one;

“As a feminist, I looked down on mumsy types.”

Really Liz? as a feminist? Have you looked the term up recently? Last time I checked it didn’t include the caveat ‘equal unless you’re a mother’ I say this as someone who isn’t a mother (apparently cats don’t count) and will leave the room and the conversation if someone uses the phrase ‘speaking as a mother’. The apparent difference between my reaction to this and Liz Jones’ is that I fully accept that this is my personal opinion, ‘stuff’ if you will whereas Ms Jones seems to need to hijack an entire movement and ideology to buffer her bitterness. Yup, I feel absolutely justified in saying that she’s bitter based on the rest of the article.

Not off to the most promising of starts then.

So, then we move on to what seems to be just the most obviously idiotic set of life choices ever exhibited by one person. Let me pull some quotes here.

“Shall I list the ways in which we were a mismatch?”

Wow, you have a list? With that many problems and lack of connections I can’t see how this could possibly fail.

“Trevor had never given me what I wanted from a relationship. At first, he wouldn’t even have sex with me.”

What a bastard. Hang on, he wouldn’t have sex with you? He only started sleeping with you after he moved in? This sounds suspiciously as if he might not actually like you, let alone love you. Maybe I’m just reading the signs wrong.

“‘I don’t trust you,’ he said”

Well that doesn’t seem fair.

“I called his bluff and told him there was no way I would want a baby with him, given he didn’t earn any money. Yet the truth was, I had hatched a plan that many will doubtless find shocking.

Because he wouldn’t give me what I wanted I decided to steal it from him. I resolved to steal his sperm from him in the middle of the night.”

Oh, okay. Now it seems fair.

What’s worse is that she has, in some completely twisted way justified this to herself.

“I thought it was my right, given that he was living with me and I had bought him many, many M&S ready meals.”

Let’s for one moment just change that around a bit;

“I thought it was my right to get a little action, given that she was in the bar with me and I had bought her many, many drinks. M’lud.”

Yeah, heavy-handed comparisons are my forte.

I honestly think that this a woman who has a need for some serious therapy. She steals sperm from a lover who she doesn’t even seem to like and then makes the assumption that this is a normal, or at least widespread behavour of women. She even takes it upon herself to warn all of the men out there.

“I don’t understand why more men aren’t wise to this risk — maybe sex addles their brain. So let me offer a warning to men wishing to avoid any chance of unwanted fatherhood: if a woman disappears to the loo immediately after sex, I suggest you find out exactly what she is up to.”

“Of course, not every woman in my position would resort to extreme measures. But I do believe that any man who moves in with a woman in her late 30s or early 40s should take it as read that she will want to use them to procreate, by fair means or foul, no matter how much she protests otherwise.”

” I believe men should be much more wary. Too many of them underestimate women; too many of them muddle along, swept up in the beady-eyed focus of the prospective middle-aged mum.”

“So when is a woman most likely to become a sperm-snatcher? If her career is not panning out exactly as she thought it would. If she is 37 or over and childless. If she worries the man might walk out on her. I believe these are the women who are most likely to be panicked into making the decision to get pregnant in whatever way they can.”

Jesus. Run for the hills and guard your manjuices carefully.

Seriously though, what happened to a stable loving relationship and the desire to produce a new life from the love that you feel for each other? How about actually having some conversations in the relationship before just making a unilateral decision about something that affects both of you so much and forever? What is wrong with people that they feel they need to play these games?

And on another point, what would that child be like today? Having

“a daughter or son my husband felt compelled to visit.”

would almost definitely lead to a supportive and loving environment for that child to grow up into a well-adjusted and happy individual. Or… or, the resentment and anger would spill over into the child’s life and he or she would grow up knowing that they were born of something just not quite right. Compulsion is not a healthy thing and is certainly not the basis of a loving and complete parental role.

It makes me sad to think that Liz Jones has so little joy and love in her life that she can’t see what the real issue is here. That she assumes that there are a significant number of women out in the world who find themselves in the same position as she was and who also feel that they have to trick their, apparently, loving partners into a pregnancy. What a screwed-up view of relationships and what a depressing world to live in.

Me, I’ll take a loving relationship where we each feel secure and loved enough to actually have these conversations. Maybe we will have children one day, maybe we won’t. Either way, the conversation is the important part and we will make those decisions together. Anything less isn’t worth settling for and certainly isn’t the way I’d want to welcome a new life into the world.